


Where Did You Sleep Last Night

by lagardère (laurore)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Past Abuse, Petyr is the shady manager, everyone is in a band, except Petyr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 13:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18756940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/lagard%C3%A8re
Summary: “Why don’t you ask Jon? For your new band. I hear he’s done with the Wildlings... You two would be good together.”He says it like he’s matchmaking, like what he has in mind is a goddamn wedding. Her and Jon Snow. Sansa shakes her head.(Or: Sansa needs a new guitarist, Jon needs a new band, and the two of them definitely don't need each other.)





	Where Did You Sleep Last Night

**Author's Note:**

> [originally posted in July 2016]
> 
> About the title: [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CISzg6yi8YE) version of the song will haunt me forever, but [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Yj0TC4BJs) version is lovely.

**i.**

When Sansa pulls up in front of the clinic, Theon is waiting outside. There’s a battered messenger bag sitting at his feet, and he’s squinting in the sunlight. He looks much better than she remembers. “More grown up” is the phrase that first comes to mind, but it falls woefully short of bridging the gap between this steady version of Theon and the hysterical mess that she saw last. He’d been gaunter then, and he’d kicked and raved as they pulled him from the wreckage of Robb’s car. The arrest had made the news – it had been a year to the day after Robb’s death, and here was his fellow band-member, crashing Robb’s car out of grief. Or that’s what they’d said. Maybe Theon had been sad about Robb, but he’d also been high as a kite.

“Thanks,” the new Theon mumbles, throwing his bag in the backseat.

“Don’t mention it.” She holds back until he’s seated at her side before she asks, “Wasn’t there anyone else you could have called?”

“Yara’s on tour.”

He’s never been in this particular car, but her habits haven’t changed. When he opens the glove compartment, a pair of shades falls into his lap. He slips them on, motions towards the road ahead.

“Wouldn’t want to keep you,” he says.

It’s a long drive back towards the city, especially when the landscape is the same endless succession of old power plants and sheds that they’ve known growing up. Sansa drives too fast, hoping they’ll arrive before either of them feels the need to breach the silence, or to mention the unmentionable. It seems like a glance in the rear-view mirror would reveal a cohort of skeletons in the backseat. Her innocence and his recklessness, which they'd sacrificed to that psycho Ramsay. Their affection for Robb, hovering dangerously on the edge of adoration. Every memory of Wolf Sister, the band they’d formed when they were still children.

“Do you miss it?” Theon asks.

She wants to ignore him, but she can’t help being grateful for the fact that he picked a subject that isn’t Robb or Ramsay.

“I have things lined up,” she says. “I’ve been composing... I have a manager.”

It’s her way of saying, yes, I miss it. She stepped onto her first stage at nine years old, and at nineteen it’s the longest she’s gone without a gig – two long years of mourning dead Starks and trying to extricate herself from disastrous relationships. She’s spent far more time on tabloid covers than on the air.

“Good,” Theon says. He sounds like he means it. For a moment, she regrets the old Theon, with his lack of filter and his odd and mildly annoying charm.

“What about you?” she asks. “What are you gonna do?” “Crash at Yara’s until she comes back. And after that...”

He looks out the window. His hair is shorter than it used to be. It makes his neck look frail. Breakable. She hesitates - affectionate gestures don’t come to her as easily as they used to. But she’s felt all too starved recently, and before he has a chance to turn back, she reaches out and puts her hand on his neck, at the top of his spine. Theon tenses, shoulders jerking. At first, she thinks she’s gone too far. Then she realizes that he’s sobbing, in silence but fitfully, with his knuckles pressed to his mouth.

By the time he calms down, they’ve reached the outskirts of the town. Sansa counts down the exits. Somewhere along the way, she turned on the radio, meaning to switch to her own playlists. But it had been one of Arya’s, and so she’d left it on. Not really her style, but there’s something cathartic about her sister’s music, about the anger that she puts into words and rhythm. When the station follows that up with Ramsay’s latest, Sansa all but punches the dial, swearing loudly as the car keys graze her thumb. Theon turns towards her. Surprised, maybe. Or relieved. It’s hard to tell with the shades.

“Are you still seeing him?”

“Have you heard his latest? _She cries a good game, that little bitch of mine?_ ” She singsongs it, far more melodiously than Ramsay ever could. Ramsay doesn’t bother with melody, his music is raw – a pile of steaming viscera thrown in the face of his audience. “I’m never stepping within a mile of the bastard. I hope you won’t get back in touch, either. After all the shit he put you through.”

Theon shudders.

“Nah, I won’t,” he says. He drums his fingers against the window-frame, seems to fish for something to say. After a time and as she veers off onto the exit ramp, he settles for, “Are you doing this thing alone?”

“What thing? The singing thing?”

“Yeah. _The singing thing_ ”, he says, with a hint of a smirk and just enough of the old Theon scratching under the surface that for a moment, she can almost picture it. Theon and her on a stage, with their barely-mended souls echoing off each another, part moving ballad and part awful screech.

“Why, are you offering?” she asks.

He huffs, looks at her over the brim of the steely shades. “I’m done, wolf cub. I’m going home. But I wish you the best, really. Don’t be a stranger, and all that.”

He directs her to Yara’s place. Sansa barely has time to catch a glimpse of two cluttered windows and of a pink lace bra flying proudly from a shutter – quite obviously _not_ Yara’s – before Theon leans down through her window. He kisses her on both cheeks. She gets a whiff of laundry detergent on his collar, and his breath is cool against her skin – he’s pilfered quite a few mints from her glove compartment. In a way, it’s an upgrade – many of her memories of the old Theon involve the smell of his own vomit as they drag him out of a crowded bar. But back then, he’d also smelled like these Ironborn cigarettes that Robb kept filching from his pockets, and that meant that the dry, pungent smell of the Ironborns was Robb’s, too. For months after Robb’s death, Theon would walk into a room and Sansa would think Robb was there, in spirit at least.

“Thanks,” Theon says. “Take care.”

She nods. She’s about to take off, when he halts her with a hand on the window-ledge.

“Hey, Sansa. Why don’t you ask Jon? For your new band. I hear he’s done with the Wildlings. Better than Joffrey, no?”

“Joffrey’s as good as dead,” she reminds him. “Not that I’d consider working with him. And Jon... There’s a bunch of people I can call before it comes to that. We never got along. But thanks for the advice.”

“Catelyn never got along with him. You were just mimicking her. Give it a thought. You two would be good together.”

He says it like he’s matchmaking, like what he has in mind is a goddamn wedding. Her and Jon Snow. Sansa shakes her head.

“You idiot,” she says, much like Robb used to say it, and pushes the glasses up his nose. “You keep those.” With that, she shoves him hard enough that he stumbles backwards, and starts the car.

She waits until she’s well away from Yara’s corner to turn on the music. Wolf Sister’s second EP, _Summer Child_ , with that weird bridge where Robb had had Jon fill in for Theon.

When the song ends, she plays it again, and again as she heads out of town and towards the lengthening shadows and the overgrown driveway that leads to her family home.

 

 

**ii.**

"I just need you to sign here, here, and here," Petyr says, sliding the contract across the table.

Sansa watches in mild horror as Jon seizes the pen and signs the marked pages without so much as a second glance.

"How did you survive so long in this line of work?" she whispers, appalled. "You need to read that kind of thing before you sign it!"

"I trust you", Jon says with a shrug, throwing the pen back onto the table.

Sansa exchanges a glance with Petyr. Petyr's narrowed eyes seem to say, "what an idiot", or, "what an opportunity". Sansa dislikes to see her thoughts reflected so. It makes her feel disloyal, and angry, too. She could slap Jon for being so naive. It's not like she's ever given him a reason to trust her. They were children under the same roof, but never playmates. For a little while, they played in the same band, but even then, Sansa had been aloof, bolstered by her mother's disdain for this orphan cousin with the dark eyes and the sad mouth.

And yet, when she showed up on his doorstep he'd swept her off her feet and crushed her to his chest, as if she'd been a sister or a friend, and not some distant, haughty cousin.

"I'll have Brienne and Podrick sign theirs by tomorrow", Petyr says, shoving the contract back into his briefcase. "There's only one last thing I wanted to discuss." He looks from Sansa to Jon with an affable smile. "Chemistry", he says.

“No,” Sansa says.

“No what?” Petyr is still smiling, with the ease of one used to his protégés’ tantrums. “I haven’t asked anything of you, yet.”

“Last time we had this conversation, you threw me at Ramsay. It didn’t turn me into a rock star. All I’ve got to show for the past year is scars and a thousand front pages in gossip rags. I don’t care what you’ve got in mind. You go in that direction again, I’m finding myself a new manager.”

She’s careful not to look at Jon, but she can feel his eyes on her, and she knows him enough to be able to picture his gaze. Warm and broken-hearted and perhaps a little heart-breaking, too. A magazine once said that a look from Jon could melt a block of ice. Sansa had laughed, at the time. She isn’t laughing now, hasn’t been since he held her on that doorstep. All of a sudden, the awkward, broody teen had become tough muscle against her breast and a large hand wrapped around the back of her head, and she’d closed her eyes and forgotten, for a blissful moment, that there was anything in the world but the warmth of that embrace.

“I didn’t know about Ramsay,” Petyr says, not for the first time. This time like the others, she doesn’t believe him, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. “I didn’t mean you should date anyone. I wouldn’t advise it just yet, anyways.”

“Dating? Is it what we’re going to call it?”

Now she can feel Jon go tense at her side. His knee bumps against hers under the table.

Petyr had let her pick the meeting place, and she’d chosen a dainty little café on the south side of town, a place where she knew both Petyr and Jon would feel out of place. Of course Petyr hasn’t shown any discomfort, but Jon walked into the café like he thought he’d got the address wrong, and he spent most of Petyr’s introduction staring in dismay at his tiny teacup. The layout of the place has this advantage that they can’t exactly sit apart, and from the start of the meeting, Jon’s proximity has been a comfort. It’s a strange thing, still, this familiarity between them, but she intends to make the most of it. She lets her hand drift down, squeezes his knee – _don’t say a thing_ – and rubs her fingers soothingly against the coarse fabric of his jeans – _I’m with you._

“I was talking about you two, actually,” Petyr says.

He can’t possibly see under the table, and yet he seems to be looking straight at her wandering hand. Sansa pulls it back as if she’d been burnt. She pretends to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“You two look good together. It could be good press. Have them wondering – are they siblings? Are they fucking? If you can maintain that kind of ambiguity, it could play in your favour.”

“There’s no ambiguity”, Jon says. “She’s my cousin.”

Under the table, his knee jerks, once, against hers. Sansa raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. She waits instead for Petyr to back down. And eventually, he does. The conversation returns to the more stable grounds of debut EPs and recording sessions. They’re in the middle of discussing a potential radio interview when Jon’s phone rings. Sansa recognizes the tune – "Kill List", the song that put her sister’s band on the map.

“I have to take it,” Jon says. “It’s Arya.” He doesn’t seem sorry to be leaving. Sansa watches him make his way back to the front of the café, apologizing left and right as he navigates the afternoon crowd and the doll-sized tables. Through the shop window, she can see Jon’s white Siberian Husky, Ghost, sitting silent and watchful on the sidewalk.

“Not much of a talker, that boy,” Petyr notes. “I guess it’s understandable, given the circumstances. Have you managed to get the details from him? That’s something we could market. We’d make thousands from the story alone. Guitarist of famous folk band stabbed by disgruntled fans. On the road to recovery with the help of his beautiful stepsister. We’d have to pretend that band of his was famous to begin with, even if it’s our story that would make it famous, retroactively... What’s the name again? Jon and the Wild Things? Mm. Kinky.”

“Jon and the Wildlings,” Sansa says. “And he doesn’t want to talk about it. I tried. I don’t know why they stabbed him, or if there even was a reason.”

“I saw the hospital report. That wasn’t just a knife graze. I don’t know how he managed to keep it quiet, but let me tell you, it’s a mistake. That little incident might be what we need to get you started.”

“Call me naive, but I thought the music would get us started.” 

“Yes, yes, of course,” Petyr smiles.

It’s his slippery smile, the worst of all. Whenever she starts to believe she’s got him figured out, he evades her with a mocking grin. The only certainty with Petyr is his devotion to her. He’d been a childhood friend of her mother, and when Catelyn passed away, he appeared out of nowhere, offering to help Sansa with her career. She’d been in no position to refuse. Without her parents to guide her, she’d waltzed into a foolish contract with Casterly Rock Records. The star of the label was the owner’s grandson, Joffrey Baratheon, and Sansa’s contract stipulated that in addition to delivering several jaunty pop tunes a year, she was to pose as Joffrey’s girlfriend. She soon realized that they meant for her to distract the public, while the family’s lawyers swept Joffrey’s indecencies under the rug. By the time Petyr came in, Sansa had been involved in a car crash, she’d held back Joffrey’s arm as he threatened to slam a broken bottle into a man’s head, and she’d seen many a bruised hooker walk out from her pretend-boyfriend’s room. To this day she still doesn’t know what Petyr did to get her contract shredded, but it’s a debt that she has yet to repay.

Two or three months after she’d left the label, Joffrey had drunk himself into a coma. It was around that time that Petyr had introduced her to Ramsay, frontman of the Hounds of Bolton. Ramsay’s music was gritty and jarring, and his band was far from being a household name, but Ramsay’s father owned a big label.

“We need to use either of your traumatic stories,” Petyr tells her. He’s a soft-spoken man. It makes it difficult to raise one’s voice with him, even now, when she feels like stabbing him with a fork before setting fire to his perfectly tailored suit.

“Our traumatic stories,” she repeats. A glance towards the front window reassures her that Jon is still outside. He’s crouching with his phone tucked against his shoulder, petting Ghost’s snowy head.

“Jon getting stabbed or your relationship with Ramsay, yes,” Petyr says. “I know you think I wronged you, but once we get past that... You’ll remember that I only have your best interests at heart.”

He reaches for her hand across the table. She feels a shiver course down her spine, revulsion or pleasure, she couldn’t say. That’s the problem with Petyr. She learned two things on the day that she met him: that he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants, and that for all intents and purposes, what he wants is to see her succeed.

There’s something alluring about this knowledge, and she doesn’t dislike him. For all that he’s far older than her, he’s a handsome man, cutting in his methods and in his appearance, with the straight lines of his tailored clothes and the sharp cut of his grey-black hair. Unobtrusive, but elegant. She’d let him catch a hold of her once, and he’d pulled her into a languid kiss that had served as her first taste of raw, undiluted power.

And then he’d gone and served her head on a platter. “You just have to date Ramsay for a few weeks,” he’d said. “And then we’ll get you signed on a major label. We’ll get all that we’ve ever wanted.”

She turns back towards the window. A girl has stopped next to Jon and Ghost, and is petting the dog, too. From this distance it’s hard to tell whether the girl was drawn in by Ghost or Jon. She’s laughing, putting on a show. Head thrown back and throat bared. If she were Ghost, Sansa’d have her teeth digging into her neck.

“You look murderous, my dear.”

She swivels back, catches a glimpse of her face in the mirror behind Petyr. Burning blue eyes, colour high in the cheeks. She stares in dismay at her reflection, watches the eyes grow cold and the lips turn pale.

“He’s a nice boy, that brother of yours,” Petyr says, with that annoying tone that means he’s touched the tip of a blade to your skin and found an artery. “Or should I say stepbrother? Cousin? Friend? Partner in crime?”

“Band member,” Sansa says. Behind her, she hears the door closing, and a step that she’s starting to recognize announces Jon’s return to their table.

“Sorry,” he says. And with an unexpected, rueful grin that twists her heart in all the wrong ways, he adds, “What did I miss?”

 

 

**iii.**

They have their first gig at a bar, where most of the audience is made up of Jon's friends from the Wildling days.

It's a half-success. Some people recognize them from Wolf Sister, which is a welcome surprise, and most of the public seems quite taken with 'Northbound' and 'Bear Girl', the songs Petyr had designated as their crowd-pleasers. But there's also the drunken guy in the back, who starts yelling halfway through 'Fallen House' ( _“And I'll sleep in our mother's bed, and you'll wear our father's coat”_ ), louder and louder until the words reach her and she understands that it's not just drunken insanities.

“Hey, Ramsay's bitch! He says you go round the Hounds, and I got a bunch of friends here that –”

He never gets to go any further. Jon has nearly fallen on his guitar wires in his haste to jump off the stage, but it's one of his old band mates who reaches the asshole first, a red-haired, bearded giant who slams his pint into the guy's head with what sounds eerily like a war cry. The set ends soon after that, in part because Jon does trip over his guitar, and because it takes a while to break up the bar fight.

Jon suggests they head to another bar after that, and Sansa follows despite Petyr's offer of a ride home, and the promise of some dinner by candlelight. She's curious and starved for company - she hasn't kept many friends from her time at Casterly Rock Records, and none from her time with Ramsay. She's seen Jon's friends cheering throughout their set, and it makes it easier to approach them now. There's Tormund, with the fiery beard and the quirky smile, and mournful Edd with the lanky hair, and Davos, the oldest of the lot, who tried to put an end to the fight and got a black eye for his troubles. They walk to some bar that Jon has heard off, once Podrick is done packing his drum kit.

"Think of your image", Petyr reminds her before she leaves.

“It’s just a drink,” she tells him. “And I doubt anyone will be watching.”

“You should know better,” Petyr says, with a hand on her shoulder. “They might not be keeping an eye out for Sansa Stark, the teenage singer of Wolf Sister, but they’ll remember Joffrey’s pretty girlfriend, and Ramsay’s...”

It’s a clever way to slide into silence, with just enough of a meaningful look that it makes it seem like he’s on her side.

“If you change your mind, give me a call, I’ll pick you up.”

She thanks him, and as he walks away, she can’t help but wonder if she’s making the right choice. Jon’s friends are not what she’s used to, and her own band is still painfully unfamiliar. It’s like being reunited with one’s extended family after a long separation – she knows their habits and their quirks, Brienne’s odd frankness and how Pod sings in his sleep and that Jon cannot force a smile for the life of him, especially in the morning. But that doesn’t tell her who they are, and what they might expect – need, crave – from her.

At least, she knows what Petyr wants.

She goes, nevertheless, torn between acting as regal as she knows how, and holding on to Jon, proving to them that she has every right to be here, that he _wants her here_. And maybe he does, or maybe it’s that he understands her misgivings, but he lets her walk close to him, closer than Ghost, even. When they get to the bar, once the dog has been left to wander in the courtyard, he snatches her hand and holds it all the way to the table, despite the way Tormund keeps glancing at them and lifting his eyebrows in a poor attempt at subtlety. Once they’re seated, Tormund’s attention refocuses on Brienne. Sansa would feel bad for her bassist, but that’s nothing to her relief at being able to hold on tight to Jon’s hand without anyone giving her weird glances about it.

The conversation is stilted at first, though it starts picking up speed when Edd and Davos return with a first round of drinks. Before long, Pod and Edd are having a very intense talk about the philosophical underpinnings of some video game, and Brienne is answering Tormund’s questions about the origins of her very valuable bass (it was a gift from a one-handed bass player, it’s her most prized possession, and Tormund has no doubt been prompted this line of questioning by a considerate Jon).

“I was wondering how you came about the name,” Davos asks, valiantly trying to break the ice. “We Capture the Castle... It has a nice ring to it.”

Sansa smiles, grateful for this opening. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to initiate a conversation – she’s been taught how to do so from birth. But seeing someone else making the first step is refreshing, and a sign that they do want to get along with her, if only for Jon’s sake.

“Oh, I stole it from a book I liked as a child,” she says. “Petyr – that’s our manager – Petyr wanted us to go by Jon and Sansa, which felt too naive, in a way... And then he suggested Stark and Snow, which was marginally better, but...”

“Sansa reminded him she wasn’t the only Stark around,” Jon explains. “There’s our sister Arya, who’s also in a band... And our younger brothers, Bran and Rickon.”

“In any case, it made little sense for me to use my actual name while Jon was using his stage name,” Sansa says.

Davos remarks on that, and the conversation takes a new turn, as Jon explains some convoluted story about a foreign aunt whose name he doesn’t want to exploit. For a while, Sansa is content with watching them all. Pod has somehow caught the attention of the waitress, and she lingers indefinitely by their table. Tormund is trying to smile seductively despite a beer-drenched beard. Across from him, the unimpressed Brienne looks like a glacier, with her stone-cold face and her icy blue eyes. On Sansa’s side of the table, there’s Davos and Jon, conversing about some dour subject with equally dour faces, and Edd, who keeps sending timid smiles her way.

This is what home should feel like, she thinks, and just then the conversation shifts, and Jon’s hand falls from hers.

“No, I never saw them much,” Jon is saying. His tone hasn’t changed, and for all she knows he could still be talking about his aunt. But there’s a subtle strain in his posture, and consciously or not, he’s angling himself away from her. “Catelyn... That’s Sansa’s mother. We didn’t really get on. I don’t have many memories of Sansa as a child.”

Sansa doesn’t quite know how to participate in that conversation. It’s not like what he’s saying is wrong – her mother had indeed been cold to him, due in part to her father hiding Jon’s parentage from them for quite a long time. There’d been a few years when she’d thought Jon was her brother, even, though of a surrogate sort, kind of like Theon, who used to hang out at their house so often that she thought he might be related to them.

“Making up for it now, heh?” Tormund says, briefly tearing his eyes away from Brienne’s expression of patient suffering.

“I do remember the one thing,” Jon says, seemingly lost in thought. He looks at Sansa. “I remember you turning your back on me.”

She doesn’t ask what he’s referring to. It’s not like that was an isolated occurrence. Her mother’s dislike of Jon may have been unfounded, but for a girl who looked up to her mother, this instinctual enmity had been reason enough.

She’s apologized for it, once or twice since they met again. It seemed important to do so, and she resents him for bringing up the subject now, as if that's something he wants his friends to keep in mind when they see her. Especially on stage, where she knows she can give off a haughty vibe.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she mutters.

The waitress corners her outside the bathroom, under the pretext of asking for a light. Sansa follows her to the courtyard without thinking, and is still rummaging in her bag for her lighter when the girl says, “You’re Sansa from the Hounds of Bolton, right?”

Sansa freezes, with her hand closed tightly around the lighter and half a mind to throw it in the girl’s face.

“Chill,” the girl says, as she plucks the lighter from Sansa’s fingers and lights her cigarette. “We’ve all had bad breakups. I mean, I guess maybe you more than most? Do you ever wonder if it’s your fault? I mean, I think I would, in your place. Maybe you’re too beautiful, or something. I love your hair.”

“They let you insult every customer, or just the ones who do you a favour?” Sansa snaps, snatching her lighter back. She stuffs it in her bag, doesn’t even bother looking for her cigarettes. Whatever wish she had to escape the bar has morphed into a burning desire to give up on it all, the music, her family, the whole social act.

“Chill,” the girl repeats, blandly. Beneath the light of the exit panel, her eyes are huge, black and ominous under a helmet of platinum white hair. “I was paying you a compliment. You need to learn to say thank you, cause it won’t last. One day you’ll be just as forgettable as the rest of us.”

Sansa’s instinct is to answer this tirade with a slap, but she doesn’t get to raise her hand. Something collides with her palm, a warm snout and a wet, raspy tongue. She looks down to find Ghost staring at her.

“Cute,” the girl says, pulling on her cigarette. “Hey, if you want my advice, you should bang him while you still can. Girls like you, they can’t hold on a guy for too long. All guys talk a big game, but in the end they don’t want the girls of their dreams, top models and the like. They want something that’s within reach, you know?”

Sansa leans down, plants a firm kiss on Ghost’s head. When she straightens up, the mask is back in place, boldness and scorn.

“I hope you choke on that smoke,” she says, and adds, sickly-sweet, “Nice hair.”

On her way back to the table, she has to shoulder her way through the crowd, and she passes Tormund and Jon, who are waiting by the bar for a refill. They haven’t seen her, and she might not have noticed them, either, if she hadn’t caught the tail end of their conversation.

“She’s like a sister to me,” Jon is saying. It causes her to pause, that outcry that’s more of a protest than a declaration of love.

“The kind of sister you’d like to fuck,” Tormund declares, shoving aside an arm reaching for a pint on the sticky counter. “You’ve got a problem with redheads, boy.”

“I don’t have a problem with you,” Jon says, already halfway to a sigh. “I will if you keep this up, though. Leave her be. Leave us be.”

The conversation sticks with her, and it doesn’t fade, not with one drink and not with ten. It’s a throwback to Petyr telling her to sing an inch away from Jon’s mouth and to the girl saying he’ll grow tired of her, it’s Davos asking if they were close as children and Tormund shining an odd light on all these averted glances and fleeting touches.

She swallows the last of her whisky coke and makes sure that no one’s watching. Tormund is snoring against the table, drooling on a coaster, and Brienne has gone off to carry a wobbly-legged Edd to the bathroom. Davos is pretending to be interested in Pod’s account of his perennial bouts of stage fright.  
It’s a tricky business, to get Jon to admit to something she’s not even sure he’s conscious of, beyond the need to have her close, and a certain protectiveness that’s part of his character, and not really due to her in particular. She’s spent enough time with Petyr, however, to know that it’s not about the conversation, but about the delicate touches one can use to underscore the words.

“Do you still have the scars?” she asks.

In answer, Jon tugs down the collar of his t-shirt, baring a pattern of red lines over his heart. She doesn’t give herself time to hesitate, reaches up – goosebumps under her trembling fingers, and his heart is beating so loud she can feel it through her fingertips –

“I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I was awful to you when we were kids. I’m sorry about that.”

It’s unfair to him, maybe, that she can sense the quickening of his pulse. He seems to be thinking so, at any rate, and he takes her hand gently, lets the fabric of his shirt ride up to cover the scars once more.

“There’s no need to be sorry,” he says. From a distance, Sansa sees Brienne’s fair hair above the crowd, and much closer to her, the conversation between Pod and Davos is winding down.

She might only have one sentence left, and she figures she should make it count.

“It was childish and stupid, and I regret it,” she says. “There’s no one that matters more to me, right now, and I know it’s a weakness, but I...”

“Kissed by fire,” someone says. It’s a guy who’s been thrown against their table by a shift in the crowd, and he stares at Jon as if his face is a riddle that he’s finally managed to solve. “You’re the guy from that band with the song.”

“KISSED BY FIRE,” Tormund bellows, as if the words had been all he needed to emerge from his stupor. “She was a great girl, Ygritte. Let me tell you, a guy can never recover from losing a girl like that. It’s like the... fire... goes out.” He nods wisely and plummets back down, worry flashing over Brienne’s face for all of two seconds before he emits a loud snore.

At Sansa’s side, Jon has gone rigid. Sansa doesn’t say a thing, reaches for Edd’s pint only for Jon to bat her hand away. A final insult, the death knell disguised as brotherly care.

“How about we call it a night?” Davos suggests, annoyingly watchful.

Still, she has to endure Podrick’s commentary on the way home, a constant stream of enthusiastic talk about their set and the bar and the good music and the kind barmaid.

Sansa leans her head against the door and stares at the dark spires of the passing buildings as Brienne drives them home. The gap between Jon and her feels like a resonating void, until Ghost abandons his place at Jon’s feet and climbs between them, front paws catching on her sequined skirt. It’s when she tries to save her phone from the dog’s jaws that she remembers about Petyr. He only texted her once, a half hour before.

_I warned you._

The message sits oddly with her, not only because it strikes true, but also because she’s got a nagging suspicion that he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

 

 

**iv.**

Petyr has them sign on with The Eyrie, a company he recently bought through some form of corruption. Sansa doesn’t know the details. As far as she’s concerned, the end justifies the means, and all will be well as long as Jon doesn’t suspect a thing.

They go on tour to promote their first album. It’s supposed to be a quiet start, with dates in cities close to home, a gig in Mormont and a local festival in Glover, a last-minute addition in a line-up composed of Tormund’s Giants and the Highgarden Roses. ‘Northbound’ has become a regular fixture on the air. Sometimes they’ll turn on the radio on their way to a concert and hear it on a national station. (And sometimes, when Sansa can’t sleep, she’ll set the sound low and switch the radio back on, tuned to that station that always broadcasts ‘Summer Child’ in the middle of the night, that weird live version where you can hear Robb _grinning_ halfway through the chorus.)

They have a tour bus that can seem huge at times but also painfully cramped when the Giants decide to hitch a ride. Most of the time though, it’s only them, with Brienne taking up four seats to stretch out her long legs and Jon humming as he drives and Pod dealing cards and Sansa using Ghost as a pillow.

Then Petyr joins them an hour’s drive away from Winterfell on the eve of their last tour date, and offers to drive Sansa the rest of the way, “for old times’ sake”.

“I have good news,” he tells her.

They’re sitting in his car at the far end of a parking lot, somewhere on the edge of town. The concert is due to begin in half an hour, and Sansa has already received a few distressed texts from Pod. At least, her phone says they’re from Pod – the phrasing is undoubtedly Brienne’s, and she thinks she also recognizes Jon in the tone of patient concern. Jon’s protectiveness has been driving a wedge between them recently, and it’s one of the reasons she’s now sitting in this car, letting Petyr make a pretense of fixing her hair as his hand wanders ever further down her back.

“I’ve arranged an interview with Varys,” he says. “In two days, right here in Winterfell.”

“At home?” she asks, thinking of the burned down timbers, of the overgrown garden with the old birch tree.

“Well, not at your house, but in town, yes. Do me a favour, don’t let Jon do the talking. If you play your cards right, this interview could be your ticket to fame. Varys has the means to promote anything, or anyone. But I’m not sure even him can do anything with Jon’s rants about the dramatic decline of northern folk songs. Have him sit beside you and look quietly brooding, that’s something we can work with.”

“Alright,” she says.

It’s not that she disagrees with Jon – there has been a decline in folk music in the north, a whole culture slipping between the cracks as a new generation migrated south and failed to take with it the songs of their forebears. The problem is that Jon makes it sound like the apocalypse, like the whole world depends on someone remembering the lyrics to that old tune her Nan used to sing to them, the one with the ice monsters and the giant wolves.

“I can’t say I’m sorry to be back in town,” Petyr says. “Winterfell was never my home, but it reminds me of your mother... And it’s not like I ever had a home, so I guess it’s all about where I choose to settle...” He leans sideways as he speaks, and though she could stop his approach, she doesn’t, out of curiosity, or frustration, maybe. There’s no foolishness involved, however. She used to wonder who was in control, but she doesn’t, not anymore. Even as his hand slides up her thigh, slowly hitching up her skirt, even as his teeth graze her neck in a kiss that’s meant to claim more than it is to please, she knows she’s pulling the strings. She has a contract to prove it, and a brand new deed on the old family house.

She waits until his fingers reach the lace lining of her underwear – and it would be lying to say she hasn’t planned that, too, from the moment she received the call saying he’d be waiting for them at that road stop. She’d been wearing jeans on the bus, and she pretended to ignore Jon’s sideways look when she swapped the jeans for a skirt, a mile away from the exit ramp.

It didn’t use to be that way – when they’d agreed to form the band, Jon had said, quite explicitly, that he’d put up with Petyr because he trusted her ability to keep him in check.

She isn’t sure he trusts her anymore. Or maybe he has trouble trusting his own self. It’s hard to say whether that glance had been meant to convey disapproval, or... If she were to be honest with herself, she’d have to admit that his eyes burn her no matter when, and there was a moment there on the bus where, if it hadn’t been for Podrick’s wide eyes, she’d have ditched more than her jeans.

“I have to go,” she tells Petyr now, fingers clenched around his wrist. He doesn’t press, he never does. Within seconds he’s back in his seat, and the car pulls onto the road.

 

 

**v.**

The club was Podric’s idea and at the time, it had seemed like a good way to end the tour. They piled up in a couple buses, with Tormund and his loud band mates and the Tyrell siblings, still wearing their bright stage make-up.

Sansa hasn’t partied in what feels like years, and she’s not sure she feels like it. There are still nights when she wakes up drenched in sweat, fresh from a dream where she struggled against Ramsay in a grimy bathroom stall. The dreams about Ramsay have replaced those where she tries to hide from Joffrey, but that could hardly be considered an improvement.

At the club, she barely has time to down a cocktail that she’s feeling oppressed, and it’s as she searches for someone to walk her outside, Tormund of Jon or Brienne or anyone, really, that she catches sight of Ramsay in the crowd.

She would dismiss the vision as paranoia if she wasn’t in the most popular club in town, a place where she’s even been with the Hounds of Bolton once or twice. There’s no mistaking the reasons for their presence, either. It’s what they call a “hunting party”, where they set their sights on some random victim in the crowd and don’t call it a night until the party-goer is lying broken at the back of an alley. Back when she hanged out with them, she used to wonder why no one ever stepped in. That was before she knew that Ramsay’s father had enough influence to bury any complaints before they reached the proper authorities.

She can pinpoint the exact moment Ramsay turns around and spots her. It’s like the old days, with the music blasting in her ears and that slow-spreading smile that transforms Ramsay’s youthful face, as if someone had struck a match behind his eyes. Oh how they used to shake, Theon and her, no matter how high Theon was, no matter how resolute she _thought_ she was – _this time, I’ll flee_ , she’d think, and still, when Ramsay fell down upon them, they didn’t fight back. There was always this persistent worry that they could never run fast enough, and that the slow torture was preferable to a quick death.

Until the day it hadn’t really mattered anymore, and Sansa had grabbed Theon’s hand and they’d run to the house. And when Ramsay and his hounds had followed them there, Theon had pushed her into the car – Robb’s car, with a thousand memories under the hood and his gloves still under the seat. Sansa will never begrudge Theon for the wrong turn and the car skidding off the road and into the river. She’d rather have died in that car than gone back to Ramsay.

And he hasn’t changed. The same boyish features, the same casual wave to signal the start of the hunt. Slowly, he begins to make his way towards her across the crowded room.

He hasn’t changed, but she has, and between them, there’s an assortment of Giants, some of them enormous and the others bristling with untameable energy; there’s Brienne’s towering frame and Pod’s surprisingly efficient fists and the two bodyguards Petyr is paying good money to watch her back at all times. All of them have heard enough tales of Ramsay to know that he isn’t to reach her under any circumstances.

Of course it’s Jon who gets there first, because he’s every inch as honourable as he is reckless, and before Ramsay has time to assess the situation, he’s down on his back in the middle of the dance floor, with Jon’s fist beating him into the ground.

Jon doesn’t relent until there’s blood running down Ramsay’s face and everyone in a six foot radius has heard the sound of bones breaking. Then he steps aside, stumbling out of the way to allow for Sansa to ball up her restraining order and stuff it in Ramsay’s bleeding mouth.

She’ll never know who bribed the bouncers, though she suspects it’s Petyr’s doing. They dump Ramsay behind the club. There his hounds will be able to take out their pent-up energy on him, having been deprived of the planned hunt. Sansa doesn’t get a chance to tell Ramsay that she’s met with his father a few weeks ago, sometime after filing the restraining order. If he recovers from the night, he’ll find out soon enough that the support he relied on for so long will no longer be forthcoming.

They head to some other bar to celebrate. The others pile out of the buses, with one of the Giants carrying Margaery Tyrell and the rest of the crowd following along, musicians and singers and the Siberian Husky and the several groups of party-goers they picked up at the concert and at the club.

“One more round!” Tormund yells, drumming a loud rhythm on Jon’s window-ledge.

Jon has yet to remove his hands from the wheel, and from the passenger-seat Sansa can see the bloody scratches on his knuckles, from where Ramsay tried to restrain him. He turns towards Sansa, waits for her to decide.

“You go ahead,” she tells Tormund.

Tormund doesn’t need to hear it twice, and with another roar, he leads the rear of their party towards the brightly lit bar on the other side of the parking lot.

“Did you know he’d be there?” Jon asks. “At the club.” 

“I couldn’t be sure".

With extreme delicacy, she reaches for one of his bleeding hands. He lets her turn his wrist this way and that, assessing the damage.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she says, gently scolding. “I don’t have a ready supply of guitarists. I need your hands intact.”

“It’s not possible to be dashing with you,” Jon says. “You’re too pragmatic.”

“You were very dashing,” she reassures him, leaning across the gearbox to kiss his cheek.

His hand tightens around hers. For a short, precious moment, she relishes the knowledge that the next move is hers to make.

“I didn’t plan this,” she tells him, and presses a tentative kiss to the corner of his lips. 

“God, Sansa,” Jon mutters.

He manages to make it sound both loving and miserable, a typical Jon combination that’s only enhanced by the warmth of his gaze and the sad tilt of his mouth. He’s never been so dear to her as he is now, in that sliver of moonlight and with that naked expression on his face. It would be the easiest thing to rise from her seat and straddle his lap.

“Wait, no,” he blurts out the moment she tries to move. He turns away, looks out towards the lights of the bar. Sansa has time to worry that he’ll flee, or that he’ll collect himself and launch into some endless sermon about propriety. But when he turns back, it’s with those searing eyes she’s come to love. It’s a scraggy wolf looking at her from the other side of a wintry plain, and for once it doesn’t run off, but draws close and licks her hand.

“We’re being crazy,” Jon says for good measure, but he doesn’t let go of her hand, and helps her climb over the seats and to the back of the bus.

It’s a messy affair, oddly serious at first because Jon tries to be solemn, ridiculous after that because his severity makes her burst into laughter until he can do nothing but smile, too, and then the whole thing dissolves into sloppy kisses and hopeless grinning. There’s no comfort to be had, lying down between two rows of sagging seats, and Jon’s hands keep dripping blood all over her clothes while making it impossible for him to undress her. They make do, anyways, spitting out strands of red and black hair in between kisses, and shoving their jeans halfway down their hips.

If she’d planned this properly, they’d be at the old house, with some light to see him by, and maybe some music, too. Not at the back of the tour bus, riding out the tension between them. But there’s something to be said for the urgency, for the manic happiness of it, and Sansa loves the surrounding silence. It makes every whisper and moan resonate around them, as if they’d successfully managed to remove themselves from the outside world.  
And afterwards, as she lies in his arms, it’s the go-getter in her, part childish dreamer and part hungry wolf, who feels the need to ask, “How long?”

“How long what?” Jon mumbles. “Because... I’d say that day you showed up with the idea to form a band, but... That’s an answer to a bigger question than just, how long have I been wanting to sleep with you.”

“What’s the question, then?”

“Don’t make me ruin this by trying to put words on it. Maybe you can write a song about it, someday.”

 

 

**vi.**

The next day they all wander the town with bleary eyes. Margaery, who has long streaks of mascara down her pretty cheeks, is too weary to realize she’s holding Pod’s hand. A hung-over Tormund leans heavily on Brienne, as the other Giants take turns to throw up in the gutter.

Jon and Sansa meet up with Petyr at some pancake place that Sansa remembers from her childhood (fistfights with Arya over the various spreads, Bran climbing upon the deer head on the wall before anyone has had the presence of mind to stop him).

Petyr takes one look at her dishevelled braid and at the oversized Wildlings t-shirt that she’s wearing like a dress. His smile slips right off his face, and then returns, shaped like a threat.

“Congratulations on getting rid of Ramsay, my dear.” 

“Thank you,” Sansa says. “For helping.”

“Congratulations to you too,” Petyr tells Jon. He’s not looking at his battered hands, but rather at a stain on the table that’s situated in the general direction of Jon’s crotch.

“Thanks,” Jon says. “For helping.”

Jon doesn’t do disguised threats. Ghost rises from his spot at Jon’s feet, his lean body rigid with tension, his teeth bared on a barely audible growl. It’s another thing master and dog have in common, this corrosive silence that speaks louder than words.

Petyr turns slightly towards Sansa and seems to come to a decision. He nods in her direction, and just like that, the meeting is over.

Sansa orders pancakes, for old time’s sake.

“We still need him, just a little longer,” she tells Jon. “I’ll deal with it. In the meantime, maybe we could use the off time for a break? Call in Arya and Bran and Rickon. And Theon?”

He frowns. She stares him down. “And Theon,” he sighs.

“Good. Well, if you’re not against working in the meantime, I have this ‘Grey Wind’ song I wanted us to look over.”

She pulls out the notebook, dives into her bag for a pen. When she comes up again he’s opened the book to a page that’s quite obviously not the right one. There’s a smile on his face she hasn’t seen in years, not since childhood, when Arya had a knack for bringing it out with her wildest tricks.

“What are you... Hey!” She slams the notebook shut, feeling her cheeks heat up. “Fuck, Jon, that’s not... It’s a work in progress. I don’t even know if I’ll finish it.”

“You better,” he grins. “‘White Wolf’, it has a nice ring to it.”

“I could still change it,” she warns. She doubts she cuts a menacing figure, wearing his t-shirt and with her sunglasses tangled in her unwashed hair. But the attempt wins her another grin, so it wasn’t entirely a waste.

“Bastard,” she mutters, and tempers the insult with a kiss.


End file.
